After banking on change, time for reflection
After nearly 20 years at the helm of Goldman Sachs in SA, Colin Coleman announced this week he would be moving on to the next chapter of his career after an unconventional path to banking which included studying architecture and being involved in the anti-apartheid movement.
In this interview with Business Day, Coleman reflects on his almost two-decade tenure at the world’s premier investment bank and the path ahead for his career and the country he loves.
Is it going to be tough leaving Goldman Sachs?
I don’t think the penny has dropped. The lifestyle changes, the organisational systems, all of the things my life works so seamlessly around are going to change. I am going to lose a lot of that corporate support and Goldman is a supremely wellfunctioning organisation.
How has the bank changed in the time you have been associated with it?
The investment bank that I joined was focused on the very biggest markets (London, New York, Tokyo). Now Goldman has a global footprint, and it has grown its other businesses, like asset management, and its balance sheet, while remaining very strong in its more traditional activities.
In Johannesburg, we went from having no presence in SA to today having almost 50 employees and we will be a fully fledged investment bank when I leave.
How has the culture changed?
When I joined, Peter Weinberg told the new staff that each one of us has a greater ability in our careers to harm Goldman Sachs than to contribute towards it because of reputational damage. That was a high-impact introduction to the culture, because the worst thing you can do is damage the reputation of Goldman Sachs.
I am proud that after 20 years we have built a highimpact franchise and despite the tumultuous period we had during the Zuma years, we have a clean track record. We always put the reputation of the bank first relative to the commercial opportunities at hand.
Did that mean walking away from deals?
We definitely walked away from transactions in SA and other African countries where we didn’t have confidence in the boards or the governance of those companies.
When did it become clear to you that the state capture phenomenon was damaging for SA?
In retrospect, the state capture project started with the election of Jacob Zuma as president of the ANC in 2007. But many were blindsided in understanding that there was an organised state capture project under way that was deliberate right from the beginning. Des van Rooyen’s appointment as finance minister woke the country up to the fact that this was a very serious problem.
What happened in the aftermath of his appointment as finance minister?
I realised we had to engage on this issue because it was calamitous for the country. I was active in getting the ANC top six to reconsider the appointment. I think that was the beginning of the end for president Zuma. His decision to replace Nene shocked the movement, the country and the world.
What should be the president’s top priority, and what is his biggest challenge?
He needs to lean inasmuch as he can into deliberately re-engineering the quality of people in the administration. I am not talking at the political level, I am referring to the administrative level, getting the quality of the agents of state delivery to improve.
But there is a real political misalignment between what he needs to do as a result of the legacy from the Zuma administration while trying to maintain party unity. So that is President Ramaphosa’s biggest challenge, to deliver a remodelled government while bringing along public sector workers and not losing his political mandate in the process.
How tenuous do you think his political mandate is?
He is the judge of that, and clearly he is being quite risk averse in his actions, which must reflect that he thinks that is necessary. There is still a very strong group in the ANC that is supporting the model of state capture because they are rent seekers in the context that they don’t have the skills to behave otherwise.
What will the next chapter of your career comprise?
Let me be clear, I am not leaving SA. My project at Yale as a senior fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs will create a bridge between my Goldman Sachs career and my next career. I will be lecturing to a combination of public policy and business graduates.
The first third of my adult life was about the anti-apartheid struggle and the transition to a democratic SA. The second third has been about using banking as an instrument of change and engaging in the process of economic transformation.
For the last third, I would like to combine the skills I have acquired in the prior two distinct phases of my career for the maximum impact on society. I see myself operating at the interface between the public and private sector in many forms over the next 20-25 years. It may involve public service, it may involve helping boards and consulting to companies, and it will include thought leadership. That will entail lots of studying, writing and publishing. My period at Yale will give me the ability to reflect, and that will be fantastic.